Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Corruption: The Legacy of Colom

El Periodico has an editorial on Corruption: The Legacy of Colom. In it, they call on the Public Ministry and the Comptroller General to investigate and, if necessary, prosecute Colom and his administration if they uncover wrongdoing. 

It's interesting because the editorial attacks both what the Colom administration did (expanding a system whereby government spending occurred through the creation of public trusts without legal regulation, the transfer of state resources to NGOs to avoid congressional oversight, using state resources to ensure political support, etc.) and did not do (no significant progress in the development of the Inter-American and UN Conventions against Corruption, especially regarding the creation of corruption offenses and stiffer penalties assigned to corruption crimes, no progress in reforming civil service laws).

While Colom might not have personally benefited from corruption in terms of financial gains to himself personally (a la Portillo) as I argued last week, that doesn't mean that his administration will emerge unscathed or corruption free. 

Again, I hope that the allegations are more spoke than fire. I wouldn't be surprised if there's fire. However, like many evaluations of what he and his administration did or did not do, it will take months if not years to unravel.

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